Color rendition: best and worse lenses

bric-a-brac wrote in post #6886914
EDIT: I'm just waiting for attacks to begin with this claim.

Well, here's your first agreement response!
I did c-prints all semester in the darkroom and it all has to do with color balancing in the darkroom. Start with the settings your paper tells you to (Kodak Supra Endura: C: 00 M: 55 Y: 65) then tweak it from there! My best results never depended on the lens, but the agreements between the paper and the film (Kodak and Kodak worked best, as did Fuji on Fuji, but Kodak on Fuji led to a lot of painful color balancing).

Ahem! Anyways! I find my lenses (see sig) approach color very similarly... very neutral. I can say the L's I've used do add a bit of contrast and saturation....

There may be two things in play here.
First if the WB is a bit off, regardless of the lens, there may be a color cast to the shot. Classic is using AWB in a dark light and getting a yellow/red color cast. You could also get a blue cast if you leave the WB on flourescent and shoot in natural light. I suspect that green color you are talking about may have been a WB issue and not a lens issue as I've not heard of a lens giving a green tint to the images and I'd expect to see it very consistently if it was the lens.

Having said that, from personal experience, I think Canon lenses have a pretty accurate color tint. I've not seen much variations in color rendering among the Canon lenses.

Comparing against the Canon lenses, my personal experience is that Tamron's have the same color renderings, while Tokina tends to be a touch cooler, and some Sigmas rendering a slightly warmer color cast.

The other thing

gasrocks wrote in post #6886454
The Costal 60 is amazing.

I just looked that up. o_O HOLY CRAP. Have you used one?

Why doesn't Canon give us true APO lenses like that ?

bric-a-brac wrote in post #6886914
working with color negatives in an RA4 process darkroom has taught me that color rendition between lenses is largely a moot point. if one lens is slightly "warmer" than the other, tweak your white balance! if I shoot with daylight negative film under tungsten light with one lens that has an 80A correction filter over it and one that doesn't, I can tell you right away which "renders" the color more neutrally.

color rendition is dependent on how you match your materials to your light source.

now, contrast and saturation, yes. I have no argument that those qualities are all over the board from lens to lens.

*
EDIT: I'm just waiting for attacks to begin with this claim.

I agree completely I shoot RAW only and the colour differences between lenses are completely trivial compared to getting the white balance correct. Contrast and saturation does vary, however, and that does matter. You can never quite tweak the image from a poor lens to match that from a good one, no matter how much you post process...

I used to do B&W and custom color printing and you are right about color neg. and for digital because you can adjust for that. It was more of an issue with E-6 and K-14 but there again allot variables. In the old days when shooting 4X6 or 8X10 transparencies we would shoot and send the first to the lab and wait to get it back to see what filtration we needed for how their E-6 was running that day. So there are so many variables in film that effect color. Chemical temp when processing film. Enlarger lenses and chemicals when making prints. Then throw in the way we as individuals see color differently.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #6888608
Then throw in the way we as individuals see color differently.

Please don't remind me

Professor: "This print is a tad cool... -5 points!"
Student: ".... looks neutral to me!"
Professor: "Maybe you're a little bit color blind! You should have subtracted about 4 magenta and 4 yellow!"
Student: "Maybe YOU'RE a bit color blind!!"
<!-- begin grudge against particular student --!>

Most men are very deficient in seeing subtleties in the greens. And then we all perceive color differently. No brain is the same then throw in eyes. Natures optics....

So then what is correct color?

Don't forget that we also have AWB in our brains. I.E. we don't see the blue in the shade, etc.

gasrocks wrote in post #6892330
Don't forget that we also have AWB in our brains. I.E. we don't see the blue in the shade, etc.

Put on a pair of sunglass that are say blue tinted and after a few minutes you no longer notice the blue.

Its like if you shoot large format after a while under the dark cloth you no longer see the image as upside down. Your brain will flip it.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #6891566


Most men are very deficient in seeing subtleties in the greens. And then we all perceive color differently. No brain is the same then throw in eyes. Natures optics....

So then what is correct color?

A lens has correct color if looking through the SLR viewfinder any human can see the same color he sees with his bare eyes.
So it does not depend on individual perception.
I am just talking about light frequencies at the lens output, well before the sensor is hit.

So which is the most hi-fi Canon lens to compete with the Coastal 60 ?